


Homecoming Anthem

by inkreservoir



Category: Ensemble Stars! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Reunions, Sibling Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-13
Updated: 2018-11-13
Packaged: 2019-08-22 23:56:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16607876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkreservoir/pseuds/inkreservoir
Summary: Leo wants to hug her, but he's already done too many uncool things today."Welcome home, brother."





	Homecoming Anthem

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written back in April as a birthday gift for one of my best friends, Valeria.

"Tell her I'm coming home," Leo instructs Madara, who gives him a smile before he repeats the words into his phone. Ruka wanted to talk to him, but Leo's sure his voice would break if he were to take the phone himself, so he refused her. He's been doing a lot of that lately, even though he feels like he'd give her the whole entire world if he could, if she wanted it. 

Madara hangs up. "She says to hurry. She misses you."

Leo nods, leans back against the paved cement wall, unforgiving desert sun beating down on them.

"Are you ready to go back?" Madara asks, and Leo nods again, watches his tanned hands fold together in his lap.

"They're waiting for me." 

Coming home isn't something you do once, not twice or three times. It's something you do again and again and again, to different people and different places. Leo didn't bring a house key with him when he ran away, but Madara still had the one Leo gave him years ago on hand, and Leo uses that to unlock the front door, unsure what he'll say when it opens. Unsure how he'll face the people inside.

"Um," he mumbles when the door parts from the frame a crack. "I'm h--"

There's a flash of orange before his body is collided into with a force so fierce he nearly loses his balance, tightens his grip on the borrowed suitcase in his hand before it can pull him backwards onto the floor, and when he feels a squeeze around his back he realizes he's being hugged.

"Brother!" Ruka's voice sobs into his shoulder, and Leo lets the suitcase drop from his hand so he can pull her tighter.

"Ruka," he breathes, and her fingers tighten in his hair. "Ruka..."

"Leo?" a deeper voice calls, and Leo looks up to see his father step into the hallway. "Did I just hear-- Leo!"

Leo's eyes widen, and over the sound of Ruka's crying all he can think is that this was a mistake. His mother steps out too, and then they're both rushing toward him, arms enveloping him and Ruka in a messy, uncomfortable circle that makes it too hard to breathe.

He realizes he's apologizing, the words tumbling from his lips over and over like marbles spilling from a jar, and his mother shakes her head at him.

"Leo, I'm sorry," his father says in a thick voice. "I shouldn't have yelled at you, I know you were trying and I shouldn't--"

"It's okay," Leo murmurs before his father can continue. "I shouldn't have left."

Ruka sniffles. "You're home," she whispers, like she can't quite believe it, and Leo thinks he understands that. "That's what matters." 

His mother breaks the hug first, separates from the rest of the group to pick up Leo's bag that had fallen down the steps.

"I'm home," Leo repeats, testing out the words. Ruka nods against his neck, and Leo's father takes a step back so Leo can properly enter the house.

Ruka finally lifts her head, and her arm drops from around Leo down to his hand, wiping her eye on her other sleeve. "Come in," she says, and gives him a tug. Leo lets her pull him inside, wiping at his own eye with his sleeve. Oh God, she saw him cry.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles once more before he can stop himself. Ruka shakes her head.

"Everything's forgiven," she says quietly, and at those words Leo has to press a hand to his mouth to stop himself from crying again. "All of it. It's okay. Just..."

Leo looks up at her face.

"... Please stay," she says.

Leo closes his eyes, lets a deep inhale fill his lungs and wills his body to steady. He raises a finger and makes an X motion across his heart.

"I promise," he tells her, bowing his head. "Knight's honour."

His eyes open when Ruka's hand raises his chin. He wants to hug her, but he's already done too many uncool things today.

"Welcome home, brother." 

Things don't change, not for a little while, anyway. He spends a few days asleep in his room, overstimulated but mostly just jetlagged. He stops saying no to meals, though, and his parents make more of an effort to eat together with the family. Ruka tells stories from school over stew, laughs with a sparkle in her eye Leo hasn't seen in a long time, and he smiles back and figures he hasn't done that genuinely in a while either. His father is almost too delicate, like if he says one wrong word Leo will break, and it's honestly a little annoying but Leo finds it hard to blame him. His mother keeps them in check, offers up ideas for family outings and activities to participate in that neither Leo nor Ruka actually want to go to.

Ruka knocks on his door, and she's the one person Leo wouldn't tell to go away.

"Um..." she hovers in the doorway, and Leo sits up, tries to fix his hair to look a little more presentable. She takes a step inside, journals tucked between her arms against her chest. "I wrote some poems... well." 

She pauses, shakes her head.

"I started some poems, while you were gone... I finished them after you came back, though."

Leo's eyes brighten. "You did?" he says, has to keep himself from exclaiming. "That's great, Ruka, your poems are always very well-written."

Very well-written. Nice. 

Ruka smiles hesitantly, shifts her weight onto one leg. "I was thinking of... I mean, I wrote them for you. For your unit." 

Right... his unit. Ruka's approached him with similar words before, but Leo's always had to reject her, unable to think yet of school and units without a feeling of nausea stirring up inside him. But right now no protests are coming to mind. 

"I was wondering if maybe, um. If maybe you'd want to turn then into songs," she says. 

The piano in their home is old, managing to stay dusty no matter how many times it's cleaned, its too heavy keys seeming to tell any who dare play it that they'll have to stake their life on it to make it obey, to make song emerge from its strings. Usually Leo would use their keyboard, with all its different settings and synthesized sounds, but today he and Ruka sit beside each other on the bench with ruled paper and black Sharpie between them.

"I don't know if I'll be able to use these for my unit," Leo confesses honestly as she arranges her writing on the stand. The last time he'd tried to make himself go to school and the disaster that turned into is maybe making the prospect darker than it really is in his mind, but he doesn't want to get her hopes up for something he can't manage. "But I still want to make music with you, Ruka."

"That's okay," Ruka says, and relief bubbles in his chest. He leans his head on Ruka's shoulder for a moment before lifting it again to press down on the first key. The note resounds, and Leo closes his eyes, letting it echo and bounce around in his mind. It's beautiful... magnificent-- that first note, the start of something against the blank canvas of air, and Leo wants to bang down on all the other keys right now, to blast nothing melodies against the silence and forget he ever knew what quiet sounds like.

But Ruka's here, and she's written words for him like nothing Leo's tongue could ever spin, so he stills himself. This isn't like working solo. 

"I think you'll probably go back to school soon," Ruka tells him after a few notes are scribbled onto the scored sheets, permanent marker and no erasing ever. Leo looks up from where his hand was furiously making marks across the page.

"What do you mean?" Leo asks. It's been so many months. 

Ruka looks sheepish, her eyes darting sideways to the wall. Leo looks too, but there's nothing particularly interesting on it.

"You came home," she says, though that doesn't really explain anything. "We were waiting for you, and we forgave everything." 

Ruka puts her hand over Leo's, gives it a squeeze. "And, you know. Your kingdom's waiting for you too. I just think... I think the sad days are going to be over soon." 

Leo licks his lip and Ruka smiles, ducking her head. Leo's not sure where she even found out that people call him the King.

He looks back at the piano, dances his fingers across a few keys. "Maybe you're right," he says.

Ruka looks up.

"Come on," Leo tells her, smiles and picks up his marker again. "Let's write a song, we'll tell the whole world I'm returning." 

This is where he doesn't laugh, because his laugh is too loud and he wants to look cool, but he lets out a loud WAHAHAHA in his head to make up for it.

Ruka gives Leo a grin, eyes brighter and more brilliant than the sun. 

"We'll tell everyone the king is coming home."


End file.
